eBay Sues Auction-Indexer

Seth Finkelstein writes "According to a story in the Boston Globe, eBay is suing an auction-indexing company. eBay says its auction data is unique, and legal claims include 'trespassing, copyright infringement, and false advertising.'" The suit was filed "under a California statute originally written to fight 'cracking'" - I wonder if that's how trespassing got listed as a charge.

Here's a little more background on this lawsuit. In early October, an ABC News story described how the auction-indexer, Bidder's Edge, had taken out a full-page New York Times ad slamming eBay's protective attitude. At that time it decided not to list eBay items. In early November, it changed its mind and, says a ZDNet story, put eBay items back on its site. Thus the lawsuit.

If a specialized search engine for auctions is illegal, aren't all search engines illegal? Disobey the robots.txt file and go to jail?

Comments

Maybe Disobeying Robots.Txt Should Be Illegal

[waldoj]

Jamie wrote:
"If a specialized search engine for auctions is illegal, aren't all search engines illegal? Disobey the robots.txt file and go to jail?"

Well, maybe it *should* be illegal. I suppose that constitutes an unauthorised access of a network, despite explicit instructions through a known standard to stay off of that network.

Still, it's creepy, no?

BTW, eBay has no robots.txt file. That, IMHO, gives them no room to gripe.

XML and an interesting personal experience

[sinator]

I am the sysadmin of a college online community (www.sin.wm.edu) and we've run into interesting issues. We are considering paying for a weather service to give us weather information every 10 odd minutes for us to parse and put into a web page.

This is because our old plan, that is parsing the Weather Channel home page's weather information for our region, has become legally suspect. At least our lawyers tell us so!

This is funny for two reasons:

1. It can't be legally suspect because of content. Please don't tell me the Weather Channel online has copyright to the weather. Weather is by definition public domain and I don't see any copyright infringement from using the information therein. Would you get in trouble for telling someone else what the weather is by word of mouth, without accrediting TWC? Weather is weather!

2. It can't be legally suspect because of implementation. We're not using the Weather Channel's implementation *at all*. Their layout is theirs, and we're just using the (aforementioned, public domain) content. They have an entirely different HTML structure, we actually parse out all the HTML and formatting and use the bare, public do main weather content.

So if it's not the content, and not the implementation, what is it? Why are our lawyers jumpy? It almost sounds as if the Weather Channel would get angry because we dared to rebroadcast the weather data they rebroadcasted from the National Weather Advisory (or whatever the organizational body's name is)... At least in the eyes of our paranoid lawyers. The Weather Channel hasn't bothered.

This leads to another issue. I promised you XML in the title and XML you wil get. XML's entire raison d'etre (reason for existence) is to make parsing of information easier. Yet, if we are to deal with a generation of confused copyright lawyers who aren't sure if parsing is legal or not, what's the point? XML makes content implementation-free, that is to say if I parse, TAG FOR TAG, the information off of the Weather Channel 2000's XML Weather Page, then my implementation and their implementation can be drastically different, but we could have the same DTD's and therefore the same content.

And the content is, unless you are seeing something I'm not, public domain. Please tell me weather is public domain. If it's otherwise, I'm going to kill myself now. :-)

Do DTD's count as content, or implementation, or is it an open standard that is to be used as all (read: "public domain") I'm not sure, but if more incidents occur such as ours, then we should look into:

1. Reconsidering XML
2. Reconsidering what constitutes public domain
3. Firing our lawyers and hiring a younger generation

That's my $0.02 ... I believe i have change coming. ;)

Lawyer: hundreds of years of precedent for trespas

[hawk]

I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

There is no need for a statute to sue for trespass here--the Common Law has recognized "trespass against chattels" as far back as we have records. Kicking a man's dog could qualify.

The law also does not require personal contact. "Tresspass vi et armis" (sp? haven't used the phrase in ten years . . .) covers a trespass with a "thing" caused by the tortfeasor's actions. Even air can qualify as a thing--this was the cause of action used for windows broken by concussion from dynamite blasts and the like.

Finally, note that this is civil, not criminal trespass. Generally no warning need be given. While trespass requires specific intent, it is the *act* that causes the trespass, not result of the act or the knowledge of ownership by another that matters. If I take a step, believing that I remain on my own property, but actually cross the line into yours, I've committed trespass. OTOH, if I suddenly fall and happen to land on your property, there is no intentional act, and no trespass.

I'm actually surprised at how few of these we see; trespass is trhe obvious cause of action for computer intrusion.

hawk, esq.